The question rattled around her mind as she'd ridden the bus to Chicago—always in the background as she'd made her plans. Why was she alive? If they hadn't wanted to make a scene, she was sure that they could have simply injected her with something while she slept, or even slit her throat while she slept.
Heather remembered reading a story online about some guy who'd been killed while riding the metro. The killer had stuck a knife through the back of the seat, stabbing the man in the small of his back and pinning him there to the seat. The guy had died sitting up, and no one noticed he was dead until the metro finished its last line of the night.
She knew the story was in all likelihood an urban legend, constructed by fearful parents to keep their kids from riding public transportation alone, or by boy scouts around a campfire, but the story could have been her reality.
After thinking it over, Heather decided that they had kept her alive so she could lead them to others who might know their secret. It was the only possibility she could think of.
After coming to that conclusion, her options were to ditch her phone and run, and hope that there was no one following her in addition to the tracking of her phone, or she would have to continue on to Chicago and finish what she started. She needed any additional information that the reporter might have come across—otherwise, she was still in the dark.
So Heather made the decision to go on to Chicago, assuming they would let her live long enough to get into the reporter's room and see what she would do next. She used her phone like she normally would, so as not to draw any attention to the fact that she knew that every action was being monitored. Heather hated being watched on the phone, hated knowing that someone was seeing everything she did, but it was a necessity.
Mostly, she had done research on Chicago and the reporter's past articles. A few times, she'd run additional searches online regarding the shootings in Chicago and the bomb in Miami, but generally her usage was benign.
The only risky thing she did that may have drawn attention to someone else was the message she'd sent to the Lit Dragons. It was a coded message sent through an encrypted email service to the list of anonymous players, as was their typical practice, so she thought it was safe. Otherwise, she’d gone according to plan, terrified all the way. She felt every heartbeat, tasted every breath, and with each second that passed, she thought that the end would come: A sniper’s bullet would thud into her skull, or she would be dragged into an unmarked van to meet the same fate as the reporter, who’d disappeared without a trace while talking to her on the phone. She wondered if they’d tortured the reporter before killing him, or killed him cleanly like they’d done to the Duke. Torture, she decided, was more their style. The Duke had probably only been killed quickly to coordinate with her own death, to make both deaths simultaneous.
So why was she doing this? she asked herself, thinking about the narrow escape she’d made from her apartment, only to tramp back into the maws of death.
Stupid, really. Reminded her of the few horror movies she’d seen where the hero investigates the strange sound of chainsaws and screams coming from the only room in the house without an escape.
But the fact that they'd cloned her phone was also a ray of sunshine. If they had gone to the effort to see what she knew and who she was communicating with, it probably meant that they would not kill her just yet. So she had given them the show they’d wanted to see.
She touched the plastic casing on her second phone—a backup, prepaid phone she kept in her bag in case of emergencies. The phone was old fashioned, and lacked the computing power of more modern smart phones, but it would do. She could still communicate with Ryan. She could use it to call for help, if needed. And the phone couldn’t be cloned.
Heather took another sip of her tea and leaned over the magazine—some article geared toward teens, giving tips on kissing—forcing herself to look at the page while keeping an eye on the elevator bank.
As if on cue, the doors opened and the man she’d seen before strode out, one hand stuck deeply into one of his pockets and his eyes flitting about the room, scanning the faces in the crowd.
She held her breath and froze, terrified to move or look in the man’s direction.
But that was unnatural. He would be looking for some girl who was obviously hiding and terrified to move.
Heather thought about mining data in the deep web, the waves of information roiling over her as she searched for tidbits of something useful. The turbid and sweeping motion of the data was comforting to her, and she took a breath, slowly inhaling and filling her lungs. She could smell the pastries and baked goods nearby, the strong aroma of dark coffee. She focused on the data and lifted her cup to her lips and sipped. Her hands did not shake as she imagined piercing the firewalls of an ultra-secure network, opening the doors to trillions of bytes of data at her fingertips.
And then, achingly, she turned the page on the magazine and read streams of binary code running like water through her mind, ripe for navigation.
She caught movement and saw the man walking through the lobby, right toward her. Heather turned another page on the magazine and propped her head on her hand and elbow.
Casual.
Not afraid, not worried about anything but the tea and the article on kissing boys.
The man did not enter the cafe, but continued on to the front doors. He nodded at the valet who opened the door for him. The man turned and looked over his shoulder one last time, then stepped outside and was gone.
Heather’s sigh of relief was almost explosive. She smiled and drank the last of her tea, her hands beginning to shake again, and she laughed when she almost dropped the mug. A woman sitting at a nearby table glanced at her, and terror shot down Heather's spine.
Drawing attention to herself, still, and she didn't know if others were in the hotel, waiting for something just like what she had done. She smiled shyly at the woman and looked around the lobby. Any one of these people could be looking for her, waiting for her to lower her guard for just a second, allowing time to pounce.
Well, what's done is done, she thought and closed the magazine in front of her. She pulled the reporter's notebook computer from her bag and turned it on. The screen was black for several seconds before a progress bar appeared in the center. The bar slowly filled from left to right as the software she'd loaded to the computer was installed.
She'd assumed that if they would go to the trouble to mirror her phone, they had likely mirrored the reporter's laptop as well. Whoever was running the operation was smart, and was not leaving anything to chance. It seemed as though their knowledge was endless and infallible, but they hadn't expected her to catch on to their scheme so quickly, and what they didn't know was that she was not coming to this game unprepared.
It hadn't taken long to upload a program to the reporter's computer that would clone the hard drive and operating system and create two versions. The first version would be the one that was mirrored, and would remain inactive and uninteresting. To whoever was monitoring the activity on the computer, it would appear as if nothing was happening, but Heather would be operating in the second version—the cloned version—and from there, she would identify the ISP of whatever system had mirrored the computer, and track it to its source. At the source, she hoped to utilize the talents she'd been developing her entire life. She would breach whatever security measures they had in place and would infiltrate their network. Their secrets, their data, would be hers.
But first, she had to deal with the Lit Dragons. She hesitated, wanting another cup of relaxing tea to go along with the dozens of balls in the air that she felt she was juggling.
Ryan had said that Mae, the girl who seemed to be at the heart of all this mess, was forced into the back of a semi truck. The truck had been accompanied by military vehicles and police cars, likely to protect precious--or dangerous—cargo they were transporting.
The Lit Dragons would do what they did, and they would save the girl, but she needed to know wh
ere they could find the convoy to work their magic. She needed a destination to which she would assemble the dragons.
Wait to breach the network? she wondered, knowing that once inside their servers, the information would be readily available. But no, that would take time. She needed this to be in motion, to get the ball rolling. Heather needed the dragons on the road.
She closed her eyes and rubbed her eyelids gently. Her heart was racing and her fingers felt numb and restless. The muscles used for pounding away at the keyboard twitched and she wanted to explore the darkest reaches of the internet, to pore through data until she felt calm and reassured again. Heather wanted to escape into the world that was her territory, into familiar landscapes. She wanted—needed—to move. Her body and mind were so anxious, she felt as though she would burst.
"Nervous bird, nervous bird," her mother would say in a sing song voice, and that memory wasn't helping to calm her nerves either. She needed another cup of tea.
Heather stood and crossed to the counter.
"May I help you?" the barista asked, her sing-songy voice a little too much like her mother’s. Heather placed her empty mug on the counter and smiled—
—and remembered the police report from that night in Chicago. She couldn't remember the name of the woman who'd been killed--Gertrude?--but she remembered the report being edited in real time as she looked on.
They were so concerned with covering their trail, that even a police report was altered from reality.
A reporter was sniffing too close to the truth, and he disappeared. The Duke, killed. And they'd sent mercenaries to kill her, all because she was getting close to finding the truth. Who knew what else they had done to protect their secrecy?
And they were driving across the country with a semi truck and military vehicles.
"Miss?" the barista asked, her smile strained, but Heather didn't hear.
She was surprised they would take roads, given the extent of secrecy and protection and the unknown factors on the road. At any time, another driver could cause an accident, the truck could get a flat tire, or they could be slowed by weather. A thousand variables that couldn't be accounted for. The probability of any one of those variables destroying their master plan--whatever that plan might be—was too much, Heather reasoned.
Unless they continued at the same level of protection, even during the transport.
Heather returned to her table, the empty mug forgotten on the countertop and the barista looking annoyed. She opened her internet browser and entered several commands to open the websites for the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration.
There was a remote possibility that the Il Contionum would use backroads and avoid any drastic measures at all, but she was sure that it would take too long for their purposes. They had to use the highways, despite the risk. If she didn't see anything, she would begin checking the state departments of transportation. Something had to come up. The only way to minimize the unknown variables and ensure the highest probability of success was to close the roads.
If she was right, there would be a trail of road closures that she could follow.
And sure enough, many roads in the northern part of the United States were closed, but not in the clean trail that she'd been hoping for. Heather studied the map for several minutes, trying to pick out an obvious pattern, but the road closures seemed normal.
She opened another tab and checked the weather, noting large winter storms covering the areas where roads had been shut down—mostly in the Northeast and the Great Lakes region. It would be impossible to know if the road closures had been caused by anything but the weather.
The only conspicuous absence of winter storms was over the Midwest. From Chicago to San Francisco, the weather was clear. Yet, Interstate 80 was blacked out on the U.S. Department of Transportation map because of winter weather conditions. She knew that I-80 was often closed during the winter, but usually only when conditions were so bad as to make driving almost impossible.
"Construction, maybe?" she muttered, but dismissed the thought. The Federal website indicated bad weather, not construction. And even with construction, roads were rarely shut down completely. Not like this.
Heather opened another tab and found access to several real-time traffic cameras on the Interstate. The roads were clear of cars for as far as the camera could see.
Finally, she checked the forecast, and could see no reason why the Interstate should be closed right now. No storms were currently threatening the Interstate.
She tapped her screen and smiled.
Heather didn't know the purpose, had zero inkling of any master plan, but would have bet her last computer that Il Contionum, and Mae, were headed to I-80.
And she would be waiting. She pulled out her phone and sent a message to Ryan. He would be at the airport already, waiting for her instructions. She calculated his flight time—less than a couple of hours—but it would have to be enough time to get all the equipment together. If she was right, they only had a small window of time to catch up.
She finished her message to Ryan and pressed SEND. She felt a nervous excitement, mixed with dread. The plan was in motion.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Mae was aware that she was floating, but she felt nothing. Slowly, it came back to her, where she was. She remembered being in the truck, and then lowered into the tank. Mae had no idea how much time had passed, but she didn’t think she’d been in the tank for too long. Unlike her previous experiences in the tank, the shock associated with an utter lack of physical sensation did not debilitate her thoughts. She knew, and she was aware.
Dr. Whaler.
He had returned her to the tank. The tank was what he called it, or sometimes the chamber, and it was his idea all along. She’d never known exactly why she was kept in the tank, only that it prevented her from accessing that place in her mind that reached out and touched the world.
As always in the tank, she felt nothing. Mae wasn’t afraid, knowing that she must only bide her time and wait until she was free. She didn’t panic, but calmly assessed her situation. She was stuck in the tank until someone let her out, and that was that. Until then, she returned to the trick her father had taught her as a little girl.
Paper and ink, here and now.
She imagined the page.
As always, the line appeared on the page, a split in reality, and a familiar world opened before her. The ink was black, but as the world opened, light and color flooded through, like a door opening from a dark interior to the bright day outside, or eyelids opening after a deep sleep. The colors swept in from the black line of ink, and the picture before her took shape with every etch of ink on the blank paper.
She recognized the darkened city street in the wake of spring. Trees lined the cobblestone road and sidewalks with buds of pink blossoms opening, a sepia tone in the yellow light of the street lamps. The ground was damp from an evening rain storm, and the smell of the water coming off the cobblestones sent a ripple through her body. She whirled in the night, her feet tapping against the ground and splashing through the puddles. She crossed to the bridge and looked down into the churning river. She didn’t think of the river that’d held her in its grasp only hours before, but admired the deep blue of the water with flickering yellow light reflecting off of it like faraway stars in the deep blue of a night sky.
The air was still cool, but warm enough to be a respite from the harsh winter, and it touched her skin and whispered through her hair. She closed her eyes and felt the moist breeze on her face and tasted the remnants of rain.
She looked around and saw that she was alone, except for a group of people sitting outside a café down the street. Men and women, and even the waiters and waitresses, pulled chairs and tables together, and they laughed at each other’s jokes and stories, and swayed to the jazz music that melted through the night. Not a single person looked her way, as their party was in full swing, and it was here and now and nowhere else.
She sat at a table, not minding the cold, wet seat. She sat and watched the party play on down the street and listened to the faint bursts of horn and percussion. She watched the windows in the buildings above the street, some dark or covered with curtains, others glowing yellow lights. A string of purple drying lavender hung above one window, with a child’s play clothes hanging from a clothesline above another.
Footsteps echoed along the stone street and brick buildings, and she heard the people laughing before they turned the bend and approached the bridge. She smiled when she saw them, the boy with a jacket and scarf, his arms around the girl’s shoulders. Their laughing breaths made short bursts of mist in the night air, and her smile grew.
Her notebook was open on the table before her, and she wasn’t thinking about the wet tabletop as she began to draw. First the black line from top to bottom, then the bridge that spanned the river, with its cobblestone surface and ancient stone railings.
She drew the boy and girl. They are speaking melodic words that she didn’t understand, but wanted to understand. She was telling him that she loves him, and he her, and their words were soft and belonged only to them, and she asked him, “What is this love, that makes me love?”
He touched his forehead to hers and she stood on the tips of her toes to kiss his chin, and his cheek, the corner of his mouth, and then his lips. She didn’t understand, but she wanted to understand.
They stood on a bridge, not too far from where she sat drawing and wishing and hoping. They stood on the bridge that overlooked a river that cut through the center of an old city. The boy held the girl's hand, and she laughed, and he laughed.
Mae put the pen down, and the picture was done. She watched the worn wooden benches and the potted plants and the clapboard signs that were put away for the night. Nothing moved, nothing floated upward in the air, not even the petals on the fading flowers that sat in a window box just outside the nearest shop.
The Snow Swept Trilogy Page 57
